Craig Hemke – Commodities Pullback and Upcoming Fed Rate Hikes
Craig Hemke, Founder and Editor of TF Metals Report joins me to share his thoughts on the pullback in commodities and upcoming rate hikes from the Fed. We focus on the big picture of inflation, real interest rates and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. There is a lot coming next week, including the rate hike from the Fed, Powell press conference and inflation data.
Dollar Index : Breakout : Tight Uptrend Range
https://saturationtiming.blogspot.com/2022/03/dollar-index.html
Potential upside is probably not much over 2% before the uptrend that began over a year ago ends.
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=%24USD&p=W&yr=6&mn=3&dy=0&id=p56683119857&a=788644509
Interesting chart.
I realize I’m old and slow but I fail to see the significance of the Russian central bank selling citizens some of it’s gold. The average Russian probably couldn’t afford to buy a quarter ounce of gold. Is this going to affect the world price???? JMO
The Russian government removed the VAT tax from Gold (which was around 20%) so their citizens could accumulate gold to get funds outside of the traditional fiat system, so that was significant. It was also important that the Russian central bank announced it was going to be buying more gold (after the nation was removed from the SWIFT banking network). The central bank buying likely helped to prod the yellow metal higher, and it is not a weak hands speculator, but a longer term accumulator, so it is important in that sense.
I thought this was a particularly good segment with Craig Hemke, and he was spot on that the canceling of trades and freezing of the Nickel markets and then resetting the pricing lower from $80,000 per ton to $50,000 was criminal. It’s interesting that when the tech stocks were ripping to higher levels and squeezing shorts, they didn’t freeze those markets, but if a commodity is revalued higher, this is unacceptable.
It was just like when Silver started ripping higher a year ago during the Silver squeeze and then the Comex started increasing the margin requirement to crush more long side activity. Also what Craig outlined about preventing more long side speculation in Wheat and only allowing selling, is exactly what market makers did during the meme stock craze to Gamestop and AMC when too many shorts got squeezed. This is a repeating pattern of intervention, when pricing surges to the upside are prevented by freezing long side trading, halting markets, and allowing selling to come in giving the shorts an out.
It is strange nobody limits the double-digit downside days in many of the mining stocks when they are crashing “to protect investors.” It would be great to have free and fair markets and let the chips fall where they may without the intervention. If shorts get squeezed on these commodities then so be it – they took that risk knowingly when they put those positions on and if they cleared out, then that’s one less short speculator… but that’s a real market. If that happened a few times, then investors would be less cavalier in their shorting of markets.
Looks like a “normal” day over the last several months. No reality involved.